


in the desert you can remember your name

by ork



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Genre: (kinda. they're still dead), Oola Lives and gets away because she really deserves to
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-13 22:06:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13579905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ork/pseuds/ork
Summary: Four hours she's been crushed in this crevice. Four hours pressed between three angles of solid rock, sharp edges digging into her flesh.-Re-uploaded after deleting account.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The original was labelled as being Oola/Leia; I've decided to split that into two works. This one is gen, covering her escape from Jabba's Palace and Tatooine. The next installment will have lesbians. I swear.
> 
> Title from _A Horse with No Name_ by America.

Four hours she's been crushed in this crevice. Four hours pressed between three angles of solid rock, sharp edges digging into her flesh. Her muscles are cramped and aching and she's faint from the shallow panting of terror depriving her of oxygen.

But by the stars, Oola is still alive.

There's some commotion happening up above. The pulsing music has ceased, voices are raised in argument. She whispers a prayer, a eyes squeezed shut.

“Please, don't let him throw down someone else, please don't let him let it out again, please please don't let it find me....”

She does not want the last hours of her life to be spent clinging and scraped in a crevice of rock.

Her head pounds. She's terribly thirsty. She doesn't dare try to get more comfortable, for fear of losing her grip and falling – she would be discovered for sure.

  


* * *

  


Six hours she's been crushed in this crevice. Six hours clinging and begging the gods for just a little more strength, just a little more. The air is stale and difficult to breathe. She struggles to stay alert, terrified of blacking out and falling.

Her limbs are falling asleep. She tenses and relaxes each group of muscles in turn, clenching her jaw to keep from screaming at the ripping pain of the cramps in her legs. She imagines, feverishly, the cold glass of fruit juice she'd drunk just that morning, full of ice. It's as far-fetched and foolish right now as a flying rancor, as a night on the town in Coruscant, as freedom.

  


* * *

  


Eight hours she's been crushed in the crevice. Her whole body quivers and trembles. The greasy lipstick has dried up and is flaking off her cracked lips onto the dusty stone. She considers biting open her lip for a little wet blood.

Up above, all is quiet. She tells herself that she will wait just a little longer. They are asleep, but still there are sounds of wakefulness, footsteps, quiet voices, sex. When it is entirely silent, she tells herself, she will creep out of her crevice and quietly climb down to the floor of the pit.

And – then what? There is no way out. She had some idea of throwing the chain up to the grate and climbing up, but there's no way her trembling, rubbery muscles could push open the massive hatch, and they'd hear her long before anyway.

This was stupid. She should have let the beast eat her and had a good clean death, dancing and defiant until the end. But desperate primal instinct had driven her adrenaline-powered limbs up the walls of the cave, fingernails breaking, hands scraping, inches ahead of the rancor's clumsy hungry claws.

It couldn't reach her in here.

Some crusty, half-mummified, half-skeletal corpse had been in this crevice already, and she'd wrenched it out and cast it behind her in her mad scramble, mentally screaming an apology to its long-dead soul. The beast below had eaten it, and must have thought it was her, because afterwards it had lumbered back to its foul nest.

Oola blinks the dust from her eyes. Whatever poor bastard had met their fate in this same crevice had saved her life. She adjusts her limbs, grits her teeth. She won't give up on that gift of life yet. She'll wait just a little longer.

  


* * *

  


Eleven hours she's been crushed in her crevice. She can barely think, feverishly thirsty, stomach empty and cramping with hunger. She's only still clinging on out of habit by now.

It must be nearly morning.

Just a little longer.

Something is happening up above. There is talk, faintly, and then the hatch clangs open and there is a terrible thumping and two new bodies tumble into the pit.

Oola is alert now, heartrate spiking in fresh fear. The rancor will come out again, and find her, and eat her. After she's survived so long, hanging on all night.

Part of her is ready, but all she can think is _no, no, no, don't let me be eaten after being so close to getting away!_

She wasn't close to getting away. She's as stuck as she ever was. The rancor is eating one of the pair now, the squealing Gamorrean guard. The other one is a human, golden-haired and dressed in black. Less meat on him. And then it will come for her.

 

And then the human boy wedges a bone into the rancor's mouth and crawls into a crack in the rock. For a hysterical moment, Oola imagines that they will both hide in their respective crevices forever, and each new victim will too, until every crack and crevice of the cave is filled with a shaking, clinging, thirsty survivor.

But then he scampers off and the rancor goes after him.

Oola can't see what happens next. Her neck hurts horribly, she really has to piss, the crowd roars in bloodthirsty glee. They're more excited than she can ever remember them being for a feeding. The blond human boy is putting up a good fight, giving them a good show.

There's an awful screech of metal and the portcullis door crashes down on the rancor, pinning it. She can't process what she's seeing. The rancor is lying still in the dirt, crushed under the massive gate of its pen, and there's angry shouting from the crowd, the Hutt is bellowing. Her head spins and her ears ring.

_Just a little longer._

  


* * *

  


She hears a tremendous ruckus of moving to and fro up above. Orders are being shouted in a guttural language. It sounds like they are preparing the sail barge for an excursion.

A thread of hope stirs in her heart.

The noise increases, until it dies down abruptly. Distantly, she realizes that the palace above her must be empty, or nearly. The silence is heavy and terrifying, much more absolute than the partial quiet of the night.

 

Oola breathes in deep, and rolls out of her hiding place.

 

She falls gracelessly and thumps down into to the dirt. Every inch of her body screams in pain. Her muscles are numb, every one of them, she cannot seem to make her limbs – her strong, graceful, dancer's limbs – obey her. She struggles onto her knees, scrabbling in the dirt. Her shaking, aching hand strikes metal.

Her chain. In the chaos of the rancor eating the corpse, she'd had a burst of good sense, and unfastened the chain from the collar on her neck. The silly little clip was so easy to undo, but she'd never been allowed to. It was part of how they tried to break her, tease her, humiliate her with freedom easily within her grasp but threaten her with beatings and assault if she tried to seize it.

The karking rancor had freed her.

She forces her legs under her and stands. Blood rushes to her head, the world disappears behind a haze of purple static. She rides out the pain. When her vision clears, she raises her head proudly, and calculates the distance to the grating above. The chain will not reach. She can't climb out that way.

Well, maybe she can climb out somewhere else. The chain would make a good weapon, too, swung hard in a circle it could crack skulls and break limbs.

Curious, she tiptoes over to the great body of the rancor. She reaches out and touches the rough hide. Once, she'd danced and lived in terror of it touching her for it would be the last thing she ever felt, but of her own volition –

It's not so bad. It feels _right_.

Tears prick at her dry, aching eyes. She's alive, and it's dead. None of this makes any sense.

Beyond the huge portcullis, daylight catches her eye. She crouches and sees that the door where its keepers came in to feed it is wide open.

She runs, stumbling, past the corpse, and bursts out into the open room beyond.  
  


* * *

  


Jabba's palace is deserted. A lone cleaning droid putters in the main room, picking up glasses and vacuuming away fur.

“Where has everyone gone?” she asks, hushed. She drank everything she found on the way up, and ate a whole platter of nerfspam wraps on a side table. Her belly hurts worse now, but the parched thirst is finally, finally, gone from her throat.

“Gone to watch the execution,” says the droid. “Didn't you hear? There's going to be a Sarlaccking. They're going to put the smuggler Han Solo and his little friend to the Sarlacc.”

“Everyone?”

“Oh yes. So much excitement! Been a long time since there was a Sarlaccking. Not often they go all the way out there for an execution.”

“Oh,” says Oola. “Thank you.”

She needs a plan. She hurries to her drafty little chamber, finds a bag, thinking to fill it with food. She needs to steal a good heavy cloak, preferably white, to survive in the scorching sun. Her gaze falls on her bed, so soft and empty. When was the last time she slept? Every atom in her body is aching, rubbery, exhausted.

She'll just lie down for a minute.

 

She is asleep within seconds.


	2. Chapter 2

Oola jerks awake in terror.

How long has she slept? Is it too late? The noise level in the palace proper has raised, but it's strange, fractured, not the usual blend of music and talking and yelling. Two arguing voices rise above a muted clatter of droids and moving furniture.

Bewildered, Oola shakes her head, trying to clear it. She gulps down a canteen of water. Her limbs still ache. The cuts and scrapes on her hands are making themselves known, and a huge bruise is forming on her thigh where she landed at the bottom of the chute.

She creeps to the door, cupping her hands around her ear cones.

“ – doesn't matter! Doesn't kriffing matter! I don't care how much gold the old slug has crammed into dirty corners, we're not – ”

“ – could fund your precious Rebellion for months, but no, her highness never – ”

“ – just saved your ungrateful skin and you're already whining and being a pain in the ass – ”

“ – may be a ranking officer, but that doesn't me you can just order me around – ”

There comes the sound of a humanoid speechless with exasperation.

“Actually that's exactly what it means! Go help Luke while I sweep the living quarters for survivors, you have fifteen minutes to get whatever you can carry and then we're leaving and burning the whole thing behind us!”

The voices die down and she can't hear them anymore. Metal crashes on metal, a droid bleeps furiously and – is that a Wookiee's howl?

Oola isn't sure what's happened, but it sounds like Jabba's retinue isn't back yet and bounty hunters have taken the palace. If that's the case she _really_ needs to get out of here. She seizes her satchel, frantically cramming in the few items of clothing she has that she wants to keep, some jewelry, toiletries. She puts on her sturdiest sandals, a pair of loose silk pants, wraps a long white scarf around her torso for a top – she doesn't own any proper shirts.

Correction: she doesn't own anything. She technically borrows everything from the slug, a fact which she is reminded every day or so.

She rips off the stupid headdress, kicks it under the cot, yanks at the collar viciously but it doesn't give. At last, terrified to wait a moment longer, she steps toward the door. It opens before she can reach it.

A young human woman faces her.

Her hair is brown and tied around her head in a braid. She's dressed in a bounty hunter's clothes, holding a blaster at the ready. Her eyes are blazing.

Oola recoils, casting about for a weapon.

The human lowers the blaster. “Don't be afraid,” she says. “The Hutt is dead. Anyone who lived here against their will is free. You can come with us and we'll help you.”

It's a trap. It has to be a trap. Bounty hunters don't just help people. No one helps anyone on Tatooine. Even if it's true they did kill Jabba, they'll let her onto their ship and then never let her off, or give her to someone else. She'll never go with this extremely short human.

“No!” she hisses, pointed teeth bared. “Get away from me!”

The human takes a step back, looking surprised. “We won't hurt you,” she says. “I'm Leia, formerly Princess of Alderaan. I'm with the Rebellion. We have no loyalty to and no love for the Hutt Clan. I swear we'll take you to safety.”

Oola narrows her eyes, trying to process this storm of information. Alderaan blew up, everyone knows that. She heard stories told about the lost princess. She heard that princess was killed by the Empire, had joined the Empire, had raised her own armies and brought destruction everywhere she went. She's heard the princess was ten feet tall with glowing eyes and bird claws for hands, and that she was a necromancer who brought corpses of long-dead Jedi knights back to life to do her bidding.

There's no way this small dusty person in bounty hunter gear is any princess, let alone _that_ princess.

The bounty hunter sees her doubting, hesitating, and does someone extremely odd for a bounty hunter. She takes her own blaster by the barrel and holds it out to Oola.

“I swear it,” she says again.

Is she crazy? Oola wonders, or is she just going to snatch the blaster back at the last moment and laugh at her. Or is she going to whip out another and shoot Oola as she tries to run?

I have to risk it, Oola thinks, it's the best chance I've got.

Quick as lightning, she snatches the blaster, darts past the bounty hunter and bolts.

  


* * *

  


The scene that greets her in the main hall is one of chaos. Droids seem to be everywhere. Some are puttering around, some are repairing others, several are clustered around a human who is apparently just chatting with them.

It's the same golden-haired human boy that killed the rancor.

A Wookiee, an actual kriffing Wookiee, is in the midst of things. It's ripping open the lockers that the Hutt lord kept illegal weapons in, rifles and shoulder-canons and racks of explosives just casually falling at its huge, hairy feet. Another human in bounty hunter garb is scooping gold ornaments and jeweled cutlery into a crate, while a third human, this one in a blue cape, makes notes on a datapad.

They all look up at her.

She turns and races for the kitchens.

No one shoots. No one pursues. No one tries to stop her.

  


* * *

  


Oola first looks for two knives, one large and serrated – a good utility knife in a pinch; one a filleting knife, long and thin, double-edged, and wickedly sharp – a weapon. She tucks them into the outer pocket of her satchel, then snatches up a burlap sack that once held oranges and begins to feverishly pile food into it.

Dried fruit. Protein powders. Cheeses with hard rinds, flatbread in airtight packaging. High-energy sweets that don't weigh much.

She fills her canteens, then frantically opens one cupboard after another, until at last she finds what she's looking for – the stash of formal tablecloths. White, linen, and generously large on her body, perfect for protection against the sun and sand and wind. She can remember them being only ever used once or twice, when Imperials the Hutts were friendly with came to dine.

Bad memories. Oola swiftly ties the sack and canteens to her satchel, slings it over her back and runs for the door. This passage leads to a side exit, deep in the rocky canyon.

And just like that Jabba's compound is behind her.

She is out, free. She is alone in the lawless and deadly Tatooine desert. And nothing has ever felt better.

  


* * *

  


The stars hang so low and bright in the desert night, Oola fancies she could reach out and stroke them. She is curled in a patch of piñon somewhere between Jabba's palace and Mos Eisley. She doesn't know where the town is. She doesn't know where any of the towns are, but she knows Mos Eisley is east, so she followed a crawler track that way, away from the high desert; and hopes her provisions will last until she reaches somewhere. Somewhere that she can hire a ship.

There are so many risks. All the bounty hunters around here must know Jabba and the people that lived at his palace, she could easily be recognized. She has nothing to pay for passage – hours away from the palace, out in the sand, she'd realized she'd made a mistake in not taking any of the valuables that were just lying around, not even a bangle or a gold spoon, not even a single credit.

It had been the last thing on her mind in her desperation to escape, but now it seems like a terrible oversight. The jewelry she has is mostly of sentimental value, cheap stuff, she thinks, that won't buy a berth on a ship. She has other things she could trade, but she will not.

Night-birds and wild desert creatures sing and shriek and howl, and she pulls her tablecloth-cloak tighter around herself. _Let them come! Let them eat me._ Better by far than the rancor or the dozens of deaths she could have had at Jabba's hands.

  


* * *

  


“Oola...”

There it is again. Quiet voices seem to whispering her name, whispering about the Hutts and the Empire and the golden-haired boy and the small bounty hunter who claimed to be a princess. For the past hour, almost, these soft ghostly voices in the wind –

Ghosts.

Oola stops dead.

Why didn't she realize it before? Tatooine is rife with ghosts, every baby knows that, but they've never said her name before, never spoken right in her ear before. But she's never been on the run deep in the desert before, either.

“My boy...”

She isn't afraid, but she isn't sure what to do. What do ghosts know? Will they help her? Can they harm her? What if they tell the bounty hunters where she's gone?

“My bones...”

She shudders. Maybe they're telling her she will die here and become one of them. Then she squares her shoulders. Even that is better than being at Jabba's.

For the hundredth time she yanks at the collar. If only she had a pair of bolt cutters, or could find a droid with a micro-plasma blade to get it off. When she gets to Mos Eisley she will keep her head and neck covered, she's decided, to stay anonymous. If Mos Eisley is as lawless as they say, no one will question it or demand to see who she is. Perhaps she could find a metal cutter there.

“Bolt cutters in the machine shed...”

Oola's head snaps up. Are these ghosts just the echoing thoughts in her mind? “Bolt cutters?” she asks, tentatively. “Can you help me?”

“Help me...”

“How? Who are you?”

“My bones...”

And Oola reaches the top of a dune, and sees the ruin of a little farmstead. It's obviously long empty, old charred walls disappearing under the encroaching desert, but someone lived here once, and someone died here.

“Luke...” cries one of the ghosts. The voice echos all around the little compound. Oola hurries down the slope, towards the buildings. She'll take shelter here for the night. Perhaps she can find something useful. She doesn't like the idea of stealing from the dead, but the dead are dead, and don't need their things anymore. There might even be some preserved food or rations, or a working water pump.

It looks like a moisture farm, from the equipment lying around. Once or twice Jabba had taken her out on his barge, as a symbol of his power, when he went to personally terrorize his subjects. All the little farms looked like this, but she's sure she was never here before.

“Oola...”

“You said bolt cutters,” she says hesitantly. “Where can I find them?”

“My boy...”

“My bones...”

“Drink your milk, Luke..”

“The droids...”

This is maddening. She'll have to systematically check all the buildings. She sets off at a jog, rounds what might have once been the front door, and finds –

“My bones...”

Two old skeletons, bleached by the sun, but still charred.

Oola stops in horror. “What happened to you?” she whispers, eyes filling with tears. The Hutts. It must have been the Hutts.

“My boy...”

“The Empire...”

“Yes, it was the Empire...”

The Empire?

Oola shakes her head, lekku swinging beneath her cloak. It doesn't matter. Whatever it was, it was years ago, and poses no danger to her now. The least she can do is bring them some peace.

She doesn't want to move the bones, but she can't leave them where they died. In the end she carries them into the nearest building and lays them gently on the floor. There are a lot of bones in a skeleton, but some have already been taken away by the desert animals, and some are lost in the sand. She does what she can, and that's what counts. When both skeletons are neatly piled inside, she tears rock and plaster from the crumbling roof, enough bury them beneath a cairn.

When she is finished, the light is all but gone; the first stars and the last rays of the twin suns shine though the gaping holes in the roof.

She's not sure what exactly to do now. She says some halting, well-meaning words. It's probably all wrong but it's the best they've gotten since they died.

“Machine shed...”

“Cupboards in the pantry...”

The voices are very faint, and not so sad now. Oola's hands are scraped from the stone. It feels good.

She pokes into one door after another until she finds what must have been the machine shed. Bits of machinery and tools are scattered everywhere. Some broken toy spaceships lie next to an empty oil bath. It's clear the place has been looted, even after being burned out. But there! Sure enough, a pair of bolt cutters still hang on the pegboard.

Furiously, throwing aside caution, she clamps them onto the collar at her throat and wrenches and heaves on the handles, scratching and bruising her neck, until the collar breaks asunder and falls to the floor. She throws the bolt cutters down beside it, breathing heavily.

Then she turns on her heel and leaves the shed without looking back.

The living quarters are burned worse than the outbuildings, and have been ransacked more thoroughly, but the metal lockers in the back of the pantry cupboard are miraculously unspoiled. She finds emergency supplies there – a solar light, ration packs, a lightweight blanket, water purifiers. Delighted, she puts them into her food sack, which is much lighter now than when she left Jabba's palace. She wishes she had those things when she first set out.

Oola settles down to sleep in the pantry, feeling better than she has in years and years.

 


End file.
